When I saw Oneohtrix Point Never’s performance with Nate Boyce at Boston’s ICA earlier this year, I knew we would all be in for something big when Daniel Lopatin finally released his proper follow-up to 2011’s Replica (#17 on our Top Albums of 2011 list). Now, following the announcement of R Plus Seven, we’ve finally gotten the first idea of where OPN is heading in this excerpt for its penultimate track, “Still Life.”

What I wrote of the new material when I heard it live was that Lopatin could be making the best music of his career, and now “Still Life” completely reinforces that. Just as the Eccojams tape, released under the moniker Chuck Person, acted as a blueprint for concepts that would become explored in full on Replica (not to mention planting the seeds for an entire music scene), “Still Life” sounds like another step forward. Paired with Nate Boyce’s hyper-real visuals — virtual sculptures straight from the “uncanny valley,” and glitching pop-up ads — this is Lopatin at his most unpredictable and aggressive. With his fractured loops and decayed samples, the song assaults you with the sort of noise that opened 2010’s Returnal then abruptly bottoms out into a storm of dark ambience before rebuilding itself with an ominous pulse and sampled choirs. It’s absolutely ferocious, and it’s only a 3-minute excerpt of the whole track. I can’t lie, this has been my most anticipated album of the year for quite a while now and after this it’s even more so. Check out “Still Life” below and look for the album later this year.